Eventually life takes on a rather unusual magical quality. Everything seems unreal and dreamlike. You get the sense that nothing is quite as solid, real, and unchangeable as you once believed. It's disorienting and even frightening at first. Nausea and other physical manifestations of fear are common while you get a sense of your bearings in this new way of being. It will pass. And soon this magical world will become as real to you as the old one. Soon you will know that it is the same world you were living in all along. The only real difference being that now you can see. Now you know. Now you have arrived. ~Dorothy Mendoza Row
I've given birth at home 6 times. As I am quite familiar with the process, I often liken the birth of anything new to that of childbirth. There is a phase of labor called "transition" that occurs immediately prior to the time when the woman is able to begin pushing her baby through the birth canal and out into the world. It is at this time when she often appears to completely lose control. And there is a very good reason for that. At this point, the child is suspended between worlds. He is no longer in the place from which he is emerging, but neither is he here on earth. And the mother is right there with him. Nothing is solid, nothing is known. Though she feels enormous pressure inside of her, she cannot push her baby out. She is forced to completely let go, to trust her body and the Universe to move herself and her child to where they need to go. The more she trusts, the faster the process, and she feels tremendous relief when she is finally able to DO SOMETHING, to actively take part in helping the baby to be born. A more solid and familiar reality returns, a place where action produces results.
It is the same for anyone, man or woman, who is birthing anything new into their lives. First, there is conception, an idea joined with desire. Then there is pregnancy, the time when that idea is growing steadily into a form that can live and breathe in the world. When that idea is ready to be born, labor is gentle at first, increasing in intensity as the reality of its emergence draws near. And like a woman in labor, that idea reaches a point of transition between thought and manifestation that is so intense, one is tempted to give it all up and run away in a state of complete terror. Nothing is familiar in this place. And one questions the wisdom of such a daring adventure. There is only one thing to do at this point: TRUST AND LET GO.
"Once you learn to let go, things just start to happen."
~Erin Haptas
I was first inspired to give birth at home by a woman in her 80's who told me that she had been blessed with the painless childbirth of her only son. She had been attempting to conceive for nearly a decade in the days before fertility clinics. She had all but completely given up when she found herself pregnant. She believed it was her overwhelming joy at being granted this miracle that allowed her to give birth without pain or fear. For me, that explained everything. While none of my births were completely without pain, I can say with absolute certainty that the more I was able to embrace trust and joy, the less fear and pain I experienced, and the more able I was to completely let go and let nature take its course.
The more you resist the power of your own being, the more pain you experience, and the more difficult it is to move forward. So now I know that whenever I am feeling frightened by a world that seems unfamiliar and out of control, the answer is not to resist this feeling, but to surrender to it. That being done, I soon find myself once again on solid ground, able to move forward on my own power, with results that are as miraculous, or nearly so, as that of a perfect, newborn child.
